from the good-for-them dept

One part of the Digital Economy Act in the UK was that the UK government could have ISPs ordered to block certain websites deemed to be infringing upon copyrights. This is similar to what the US is trying to pass with COICA (or, already doing via Homeland Security's domain name seizures). However, it appears that at least some folks in the government are realizing this is a dangerous idea, and they're now exploring whether or not it's actually a feasible plan. That's better than just implementing it, of course. Perhaps most interesting is that this "rethink" was driven by a government website which asked the public to "nominate laws and regulations they would like to see abolished." Apparently this was a big one. What a concept: having citizens in a democracy point out what laws they believed were unfair.

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At least the UK maintains the illusion of government representing the peoples' interest.

It may look that way from over there but I think you'll find we can do pointless and draconian police state laws at least as well as the US. A few examples immediately spring to mind:
No right to silence when arrested. (Current wording "You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defense if you fail to mention when questioned something you later rely on in court")
Guilty until proven innocent and no right not to incriminate yourself. (As far as I know you must hand over an encryption key when asked by police and failure results in being guilty of obstruction. This to my knowledge applies even if you can prove your machine has been hacked and there would therefore be a reasonable doubt as to whether you even had the encryption key)
Oh and we have far more CCTV cameras than you guys for a smaller population - I seem to remember the statistic is we have 1/4 of the worlds CCTV cameras. As far as I know the police can claim any footage they like.

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To bad the hereditary peerage from the House of Lords was removed in 1997

the police caution thing "Criminal Justice an Public Order (yeah right) act 1994" (sarcasm added) but yes it didn't really help much. A bunch of upper class twits who at least tended to be fairly educated and impartial in a class-biased sort of way to a bunch of bought and paid for cronies was not a fair swap IMO. The encryption thing was worse though. From an article at the time:

"The burden of proof is on the suspect to prove that they don't have the key, and if they fail, they go to prison. But if they can give an explanation for not having the key, then the prosecution must prove beyond reasonable doubt that they are lying," Bowden said.

Clearly the difficulty with proving a negative never occurred them in all the cries of "Think of the children!", which is of course how it was justified.

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Actually that's am interesting point that I haven't seen discussed anywhere.

By putting large burdens on ISPs with the DEA, like needing a (probably large considering how foamy-at-the-mouth some content providors can get) beaurocracy to handle the admin of takedowns and well as massive amounts of infrastructure to cope with the demanded retention of data etc, it puts up a huge barrier to entry for a startup ISP. It's also likely to put a load of the existing smaller ones out of business unless it gets modified.

That would indeed result a small number of ISPs having de-facto control over all connectivity in the UK by reason of being the only ones able to afford to meet the regulations. It's bad enough already with many if not most ISPs relying on BT infrastructure for last-mile delivery in many places.

Potential result? Well we've just seen how well such a situation worked out for Egypt. I'm sure we all assume "that would never happen in the UK", but.....

Governments are facing the dilemma of trying to balance the public's right to know and right to read what they want with the good old "greater good". They aren't going to just throw their hands up and say they can't do anything about it, they would be working themselves out of a job.